It started with a spark, just a tiny, innocent little spark that flew from the end of the cigarette lit by the careless young man. That little spark landed in a pile of dead leaves. The spark gasped for air and pulled in the oxygen, but then it was getting tired so it reached out and grabbed hold of a dark brown, crinkly maple leaf that lay next to it. The spark chewed and chewed and as it chewed, the spark grew. When the spark was done it moved onto the next dead leaf and the next until that little spark was no longer a spark, it had become a fire.

It was big, as big as a lion, and it didn’t stop there. Once fire was done with the pile of leaves, it leapt onto a holly bush and devoured that to. Next was the large maple tree that went up in flames, followed by the cherry tree, the ancient redwood, and the graceful weeping willow. The trees screamed and cried as they burnt and the fire just laughed and kept going. It was so hungry.

Decayed smoke flew from inside the fire as it ate and sapped the clean oxygen for miles around. Faster and faster the fire went, racing around corners until suddenly it was confronted with a river.

The fire paced back and forth on the shore, searching for a way across, it wanted all that yummy food on the other side. Suddenly a gust of air billowed through the valley and the fire jumped on board, landing on the other side. So fire’s rampage continued, driving the deer and foxes and eagles and owls and rabbits and mice ahead of it like a demonic shepherd.

As the fire continued on its path it began to encounter unnatural things. They were made of cold metal and acrid plastic and they tasted horrible, but fire was hungry, so it ate them anyways. Trucks and cars morphed into scorched piles of ash and twisted metal. Faster and faster fire went, until it came to a clearing.

Normally this would have stopped fire, but not this time, because somebody had put giant piles of wood in the middle of this clearing. So fire jumped onto the wood and ate away, tasting the crackling wood and melting plastic, the shattering glass and the flimsy cotton. The houses crumbled into particles of dust and smears of soot.

For hours and hours fire ate and burned and smoked. At some point, tiny men had started spraying water on its edges. That hurt and fire was mad so it fought harder, smoked more, and consumed faster and, for a while, the men were forced back, as if by the mere weight of fire’s hunger. But then, then the men lit another fire and this one ate away all of fire’s food so that fire started to die. It didn’t go slowly, no it searched and reached for any bit of food that would let it last a little longer, but eventually it started to diminish.

The air started to clear and the ash started to settle, until all that was left was a tiny little spark that was put out by the foot of one of the men that no longer seemed so tiny.